Oculus Rift owners are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Rooms social hub and with good cause. Already available on Gear VR, Rooms includes critical features such as parties that allow you to launch into multiplayer games together. Some fear that parent company Facebook’s own social app for Rift, Spaces, might be replacing Rooms. Facebook assures us that isn’t the case.
In an interview with UploadVR Head of Facebook Spaces Rachel Franklin stated that there are “no plans” for one service to “overtake” the other. “Rooms is really fundamental to the Oculus platform. And it’s one of those things that makes it fundamental is you can do the app launching and go into multiplayer,” Franklin explained. “We are learning from each other but, at this point, there’s no plans to kind of have one overtake the other.
“There’s similarities but they’re also serving two different worlds.”
Spaces is directly connected to a user’s Facebook account, providing access to their pictures and friends lists. You can meet up with other friends, share pictures and even video call other Facebook friends with smartphones. Recently, the app also added a live streaming ability.
“I think there’s lots of cool stuff we would like to do,” Franklin replied when asked if Spaces might get Rooms-like features like app launching. “I think the intention of both products at least right now is pretty different. So we’re starting from a place of, you have Rift technology, you’re with your friends, how do we bridge out from that?”
Over on the Oculus side, Head of Rift Nate Mitchell has in the past said that the Rooms team would continue to improve the experience on Gear before moving to Rift, but we’re still yet to get a definitive statement on if and when it will arrive on the platform. Until then you’ll have to keep loading up multiplayer games within apps.
